SCIE staff were welcomed to the meeting. The outgoing staff representative,
Enid Levin, was thanked for her great contribution to the Board.

Enid thanked the Board for making her feel so welcome and noted she had
found being staff representative a very positive experience. The new staff
representative would be Lisa Bostock and SCIE staff were actively looking
for a new staff representative elect.

2) Declaration of any other business

The updated "Forthcoming dates for the Board" and
two new SCIE publications - position paper 3 'Has
service user participation made a difference to
social care services?' and Guide 2 'Involving service
users and carers in social work education', were
distributed. Both publications were under embargo
until 10 March, to coincide with the launch of
the Partners' Council.

3) Minutes and matters arising

Minutes of the AGM meeting and board meeting held on 15 January 2004 were
approved by the trustees for signature.

There were two amendments to the board meeting minutes:

Minute 5.1: Chief Executive's Report:

Bullet point 2, last sentence: 'The current timetable to draw up the term
of reference of the group would be extended to Easter 2004. '

Bullet point 4, first sentence: 'Amanda Edwards was congratulated on her
appointment to the Board of the NHSU '.

Matters Arising:

Minute 7 - Establishment of Partners' Council:

There were 5 BME members of the Partners' Council and 15 members with physical,
mental or learning disabilities.

The Children Bill was launched today. SCIE would respond to aspects of the
Bill in its workplan.

Minute 5 - Chief Executive's report:

The final version of the Blue Skies/Looking to the Future project brief
would be circulated to trustees when completed. The draft commissioning brief
for the literature surveys had been produced and sent.

ACTION: Final project brief to be sent to Board members

4) Reports of Chief Executive and Chair

4.1 Chair's Report

The Chair highlighted the following points from the paper:

The meeting with Maria Eagle MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary
of State, Department for Work and Pensions, had been an extremely interesting
and useful meeting. She felt that there were lots of opportunities within
the current benefits system for paying service users for their involvement
but agreed to chair a seminar to look at benefits systems and barriers
to involvement. Stephen Ladyman MP and other government departments would
be contacted with regard to hosting this seminar.

SCIE was now forming useful links with other government
departments, such as the DWP and Prime Minister's Strategy Unit.

The Positive Parenting seminar had received good feedback.
Board members would be sent a copy of the notes.

Jane Campbell had delivered one of the keynote speeches
at the DRC public debate on independent living, along with Denise Platt.
This had been a powerful combination and the DRC, CSCI and SCIE were all
working towards similar aims with regard to independent living. This had
been noted by policy makers.

Amanda Edwards and Jane Campbell had now carried out a thorough
review of the 2004/5 workplan.

The Partners Council's first meeting would be held on 10
March. The launch of the Council was an incredibly important development
for SCIE.

SCIE had received a letter from Lord Warner regarding the
review of Arms Length Bodies (ALBs). SCIE had responded to Lord Warner
that SCIE was not an ALB.

There was one amendment to the Chair's paper: The 'Nursing
Mirror' should be replaced by the 'Nursing Standard'.

4.2 Chief Executive's Report

The Chief Executive's report focused on the proposed joint initiative between
SCIE and the Department of Health (DH) to develop a Care Services Development
Initiative.

Background to the Initiative:

As part of the 2004 Spending Review the government had commissioned a number
of reviews, detailed in the paper, to consider decentralising power and decision
making. DH's internal restructuring was modelled on these principles. It
appeared that the results of the reviews would be mergers, closures and job
losses. With this in mind Antony Sheehan, director of Care Services at DH,
had approached SCIE to discuss a joint initiative to develop care services.

The Care Services Development Initiative proposal is to develop a partnership
between the Care Services Department (CSD) and SCIE to harness and direct
developmental resources into social care. The initiative would have four
key aims:

to assist the Care Services Directorate in DH to establish
a framework for how it conducts business inside and outside DH

to look at social care governance and create a cross-governmental
care services alliance

to look at partnerships with health and social care regulators,
inspectors, authorities etc

to look at how to use service improvement activities more
effectively

The Care Services Development Initiative would be created via a separate
partnership agreement with DH, funded through the Section 64 grant as separate
but additional funding. The final amount of funding had not yet been determined
but the bulk of the money would be used to commission work. The Unit would
be accountable to Antony Sheehan and Bill Kilgallon.

The initiative is an attempt by DH to have a real partnership with an external
body and is an opportunity for SCIE to help set a vision for social care.
It would be created in a form that recognised and respected SCIE's independence.

Discussion:

Jane Campbell indicated that she was in favour of taking the work forward
and asked for comments from the Board. The following comments were made:

the opportunity to strengthen SCIE as a knowledge and practice
base for social care and for SCIE to influence social care policy development
was broadly welcomed. However many trustees emphasised SCIE would have
to ensure that it maintained its independence

trustees stressed that the initiative should strengthen
rather than detract from SCIE's core business

trustees agreed that strengthening the social care base
of SCIE's work might assist in avoiding merger with a health-based organisation

it was felt that SCIE should avoid entanglement in DH restructuring
or reorganisation

the proposal was seen as a good opportunity to broaden SCIE's
focus on adult services

trustees stressed the importance of being able to bring
the partnership to an end if it did not fit in with SCIE's core business
or charitable objects

trustees recognised that there would be in-built tensions
in the partnership, but noted that these tensions existed in any event
and SCIE had in the past not always agreed to carrying out work proposed
by DH

trustees agreed that the initiative might offer an opportunity
to strengthen and shape social care services and that this was an opportunity
SCIE might otherwise not have

Amanda Edwards explained how the initiative would fit into the context of
the workplan.

Jane Campbell felt that SCIE was in a strong position to make clear agreements
about the resourcing, managing and boundaries of the partnership. Amanda
Edwards noted that SCIE had experience of creating partnership agreements,
to set the partnership framework and govern the partnership.

Decisions:

There was unanimous agreement from Board members that SCIE should agree
to the initiative with DH but that we should be very clear through the agreement
about SCIE's independent status.

It was agreed that a sub-group of the Board would be created to consider
developments. It was agreed that the sub-group members would be Jon Glasby,
Janet Lewis, Terry Philpot and Gail Tucker.

5) Financial Report

The committee had met on 10 February and had received a helpful report from
Nishal Rooplal, SCIE's IT advisor from Cooperative Systems, about security
for SCIE's IT base and the backup of computer systems. As SCIE worked from
a single platform this was very helpful in terms of protecting the system.
The system for storage of offsite backups was currently being improved.

Gail Tucker said that the Audit Committee has also been provided with a
very full risk assessment, prepared by SCIE's auditors working with Victoria
McNeill and Pearl Sebastian. In general SCIE was exposed to very little risk
because of measures that had been put in place to reduce exposure. One of
the areas identified in the risk assessment was the need for Board members
to be given thorough inductions and sufficient information for them to understand
their role. A guide for trustees would be prepared in the near future to
underline the trustees' duties, particularly as charity trustees. The Audit
Committee considered SCIE's commissioning process with regard to conflicts
of interest and bias. Existing conflicts of interest would be declared in
reports. Jane Campbell welcomed the risk assessment

Reports on insurance claims and commissions would be a standing item on
future Audit Committee agendas.

Pearl Sebastian introduced the latest forecast on SCIE's financial situation
as at the end of the financial year 2003/2004. SCIE will carry forward over £1
million to the next year. Some of the money allocated to Knowledge Services
projects and the Rapid Response fund had not been spent this year.

6) Progress report on work plan 2003/4 and draft work
plan 2004/5

Jane Campbell invited Amanda Edwards to present the paper.

Amanda Edwards introduced the draft workplan and explained that a progress
report on the workplan would be submitted to the Board at regular intervals
throughout the year.

Whilst funds has been attributed to special projects we have tried to retain
some flexibility to allow for writing for external publications, holding
seminars and responding to consultations. If SCIE were asked to undertake
any further projects the plan would need to be altered and additional funds
found or some projects curtailed.

The criteria SCIE was using for rejecting and accepting projects for the
workplan were listed in the paper. SCIE had held meetings with the DH, DfES
and Wales with regard to the plan, but were yet to discuss it with Northern
Ireland.

Jane Campbell noted that there would be several routes for shaping the workplan - through
staff comments, Board comments, the Partners Council and the Practice Partners'
Network.

Decisions:

It was agreed that a Board work programming sub-committee would be established.
The group would finalise the current workplan and begin to look at the long-term
workplan. Jane Campbell would chair the sub-committee.

ACTION: Board members were asked to let Jane Campbell
know if they were interested in joining the sub-committee.

It was agreed that Amanda Edwards would hold a meeting with the new board
sub-committee before the next Board meeting to discuss how the work would
be done, including how much would be commissioned to external parties. She
would also show where BME issues were included in the workplan.

ACTION: Amanda Edwards to arrange a meeting with the
new board sub-committee on the workplan

7) Budget 2004/5

Jane Campbell invited Pearl Sebastian to present the budget paper.

Although SCIE had not yet had confirmation of the amount of funding it would
receive for the financial year ending 31 March 2004, it was largely certain
that it would be about £5 million in unrestricted funds, with additional
restricted funding for e-learning, the leadership programme and the care
services development initiative.

The figures given in Appendix A were more precise for Corporate Services
than Knowledge Services, as the latter was dependent on finalising the work
programme at the DH review on 28 April. Once the work programme had been
clarified the budget would be presented to the Audit Committee.

It was agreed that a breakdown of the Knowledge Services and Corporate Services
expenditure would be sent to Board members.

ACTION: Pearl Sebastian to produce the summary to be distributed
to the Board.

Victoria McNeill noted that SCIE would only have spent between £25,000-30,000
of the rapid response fund this financial year, but that some of next year's £200,000
would need to be put towards projects already agreed by the board and some
of the new projects that the board were requesting in the work programme.

The Board unanimously approved the budget.

9) Dissemination Strategy

It was agreed to discuss this item at the next meeting.

10) SCIE Conferences

It was agreed to discuss this item at the next meeting.

11) Practice Partners' Programme

SCIE had been conducting outreach with the Practice Partners network and
was now building up good relationships with the network. The programme was
launched in November, which nearly all SCIE's potential partners attended.
Since then Sara Lewis, practice development manager, had been visiting individual
practice partners to discuss their input in SCIE's work. SCIE had got a good
sense of what the partner organisations wished to gain from the network.
This included sharing practice with each other as well as participating in
SCIE's work.

SCIE was committed to running an annual event for the network as well as
producing newsletters and other forms of dissemination. Each Practice Partner
had nominated a key link person and would consider SCIE's workplan and decide
in what areas they would like to work with SCIE. These areas would be chosen
on the basis of what that they wanted to do better and where they felt they
could help SCIE improve. Briefings would be provided for senior level staff
within the Partner organisations to ensure that the whole organisation supported
the network.

The Board had previously expressed concern about the lack of a private sector
Practice Partner. As a result SCIE had approached the private sector organisation
that Shokat Babul had recommended and they had joined the network.

Amanda Edwards had held a long discussion with Ratna Dutt with regard to
BME matters. Some of the Practice Partners, such as Leicester and Southwark
Social Services, were dealing with BME issues on a daily basis and would
assist SCIE in its work in this area.